NASA’nın Swift gözlemevi yirmi yılı aşan bilimsel görevini tamamladı

NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory has stopped doing science because it has sunk below 275 kilometres above Earth, where stronger atmospheric drag keeps its telescopes from holding steady on a target. Its final observation came on 20 October, and the craft is expected to re-enter the atmosphere within a few weeks. Launched in November 2004 for a two-year primary mission, Swift went on working for more than ten times that period. It was designed to spot gamma-ray bursts, the strongest blasts known in the cosmos, and to swing its telescopes toward them in about a minute, before their afterglows disappeared. In 2005 this speed let it detect the first afterglow of a short burst, supporting the view that such events probably result from the merger of two neutron stars. Over its career it recorded more than 2,000 bursts and more than 1,400 supernovae, and NASA says its public archive, roughly 12 terabytes, should fuel research for decades.